Monday, November 19, 2012

NaNo Progress Report, Week Three

Day Thirteen: I'm still ahead, and my prose predictably sucks. This is as to be expected. Writing is fucking hard work.

I'm cheating. I'm actually going back and editing a few things with the stipulation that I add more words than I remove.

Day Fourteen: Well, it took almost two weeks before my writing actually started to sound like my writing. I'm letting it be quirky and non-linear. I just wish I would have done it this way from day one instead of trying to write THE BOOK in big, capital letters. On the plus side, this is the least sucky NaNo I've ever written.

Days Fifteen and Sixteen: I'm averaging 3000+ words a day. I'm determined to finish this thing before November 30, even if it means sacrificing some of my sanity. After about 2500 words I start to sound a little silly.

Day Seventeen: Polishable turd: that is my goal. I wrote about 4000 words today. I'm determined to have this thing finished by Thanksgiving. I've done NaNoWriMo since 2006, excluding last year, and I've "won" in only '06 and '07. The first one was a joke, literally. It was so awful I had to turn it into a bad parody of a Nick Hornby novel. 2007's was a mess. Calling it awful would be generous. This isn't hipster self-loathing, they were really that bad. But hey, good writing practice, right? This one doesn't suck so hard, though I see so much I want to change RIGHT NOW and I'm trying my hardest not to edit as I go along.

Day Eighteen: Just over 10,000 words to go. I'm trying to have this thing done in a few days, so this will probably be my last NaNo update. Okay, I'll admit it now, I am one of those annoying people who can bang out a 2000-word screed (or 2000 words of a novel) in an afternoon. It does get easier. That doesn't mean the writing is any better, but my typing skills have vastly improved.

Or maybe not. Here's a selection of this week's nanoisms:

"He could feel the nile rising in his throat." (Impressive, but bile makes more sense.)

"... stereotypical acts of male modeling." (That should read male bonding, but I think I would have had more fun with this story had I made it about male models.)

"His mother's cooking made him gaga." (Gag would work too.)

"... picking up the peaches..." (I meant to finish with "picking up the pieces of his life," which I delete as soon as I wrote the word "peaches," not because it was an utterly silly typo, but because the phrase "picking up the pieces of his life," is so hackneyed I couldn't live with myself.)